Globe and MailJanuary 26, 2005Beef up the scienceBy Andrew Nikiforuk"Where's the science?" When U.S. inspectors check out the health of Canada's cattle herds this week, they'll likelyhear the line that our BSE program is "science-based." It's the new federal mantra on mad cows.But a growing number of people are asking if Canada's mad-cow policies are truly science based. They arebeginning to realize, as Albert Einstein clearly did, that "the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement ofeveryday thinking." In other words, science is common sense writ large. Yet, any close examination of Canada'sbovine spongiform encephalopathy programs reveals a worrying lack of refinement, thought or common sense.Let's start with the institution responsible for our food supply: the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).Incorporated in 1997, this agency reports to the Minister of Agriculture and is run by Richard Fadden, a formersecurity and intelligence co-ordinator for the Privy Council, a body not known for its science.Like the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), CFIA has two incompatible mandates: promoting tradeand contributing to food safety. Trade clearly dominates. Since 1997, the agency has downgraded its sciencecapabilities by closing labs; it has hired lots of folks with MBAs and communication degrees; and it has adopted apaper audit system for food inspection.England had the same conflicted system until its BSE crisis revealed a fatal weakness: When trade triumphs overpublic health, industry eventually loses billions of dollars. Europe and Japan also discovered the same drawbacks,thanks to BSE.So CFIA may be called a trade-based, industry-based, efficiency-based, or even a public-relations-based agency.But no citizen who has reviewed its BSE performance would call it science based.In fact, CFIA has regularly rejected good science. In July of 2000, a team of European BSE scientists examined 23countries, including Canada, to assess mad-cow risk. After studying data on feed standards and cattle imports, thesescientists concluded, "BSE-infectivity could have entered the Canadian system."The scientists also reported that, "Overall the Canadian rendering industry is apparently not able to ensure asignificant reduction of incoming BSE-infectivity." The Europeans gave the U.S. systems the same poor grade.Both countries, however, ignored the science and replied with trade-based rhetoric: "BSE is a European-disease."Now what about this science-based "firewall" that has prevented cattle cannibalism since 1997, the one that issupposed to keep BSE out of the animals we eat? Even CFIA's records show that this was as porous as a volleyballnet.Between 1999 and 2001, federal audits of 65 feed mills found that 31 per cent didn't follow the rules. The followingyear, 35 per cent of 70 firms didn't obey the ban. Full compliance, in paper at least, wasn't achieved until the end of2000, or three years after the ban. That's the same year the Auditor-General identified general "problems withcompliance actions" at CFIA.The half-hearted implementation of the ban can be explained by a 2000 Health Canada report on BSE risk thatdescribed the ruminant feed ban as "a voluntary ban that is monitored by CFIA." (The U.S. General AccountingOffice found that its feed ban was just as "flawed.") The same risk report also noted that European feed bans werenotoriously leaky. England, for example, has had more than 44,000 cases of BSE after its serious feed ban, forreasons that still confound scientists.&2Nor have the feed leaks here been plugged. In December, a Vancouver Sun investigation based on internal CFIAdocuments, revealed that half of 70 vegetable feed samples tested by CFIA in 2004 contained "undeclared animalmaterials." DNA assay testing would have identified how much of the material was actually cattle protein, but CFIAdidn't do that. And without assay testing, say veterinary toxicologists, Canada essentially has an unenforceable feedban.We eat what our animals eat. For the record, one milligram of infected material, the size of a grain of sand, caninfect a cow with BSE.Approximately 600 feed mills in Canada produce 13 million tonnes of feed every year.But, hasn't our testing of cattle been scientific? Canada has what is known as a passive surveillance system. In otherwords, it picks out cows with central-nervous-system symptoms for the odd test -- less than 1,000 cows a year until2003.France had a similar system that underreported BSE by 80 per cent and allowed 50,000 severely infected animals toenter the food chain."Because of this underreporting, the French BSE epidemic in the late 1980s was completely undetected and only thesecond wave, after 1990, was observed" reported a study in the journal Veterinary Science last year. In other words,official statistics were not a true reflection of the epidemic.Given France's data, Canada could be seriously underreporting BSE. But CFIA won't know this until it begins aresponsible, active surveillance program.The Canadian government's approach to BSE has been so trade-biased that last year it even fired three scientistsfrom Health Canada for talking about the emerging science concerning BSE. Margaret Haydon, an Alberta-bornveterinarian with more than 30 years of experience, was one of them. She describes the present system as "corrupt"and doesn't believe Canada's current level of testing (24,000 cows a year) is close to adequate. "The governmentsays we have a low incidence of BSE. Yet where is the evidence that we have a low incidence?"Ms. Haydon also offers a good explanation as to why Canada's low-level surveillance system is only finding cowsin Alberta. For starters, Alberta is the only province where veterinarians have had experience looking at ChronicWasting Disease in elk, another notorious BSE-like disease that punches thebrain full of holes."They have seen the slides of brain tissue and that's why it's not concealed," says Ms. Haydon.Is the U.S. system any more science-based? No. An internal audit of the USDA's mad-cow surveillance program bythe agency's inspector last fall found a failure to test the riskiest animals, confusion among inspectors andslaughterhouses and a failure to follow regulations.Yet, as Ms. Haydon notes, "The Americans are telling us what to do and we are at their mercy." And they will doanything to protect their $70-billion industry.The refinement of everyday thinking now strongly suggests that Canada has a significant BSE problem. Commonsense indicates that any effective solution must involve active testing of animals aged 24 months or older; a realfeed ban and an independent organization dedicated to food safety.Until then, our trade-based approach to BSE will remain hopelessly unscientific, grossly ineffective and anythingbut "science-based." Andrew Nikiforuk is a Calgary journalist and author of The Fourth Horseman: A Short Historyof Plagues, Scourges and Emerging Viruses.